[HN Gopher] Hatetris - Tetris which always gives you the worst p... ___________________________________________________________________ Hatetris - Tetris which always gives you the worst piece Author : rishabhd Score : 417 points Date : 2021-05-06 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (qntm.org) (TXT) w3m dump (qntm.org) | AdamN wrote: | This is a good example of structuralism. The rules of the game | are exactly the same but the rules for determining which piece is | next change which strategy is successful. | matthodan wrote: | I got five lines. sttaypGlayKStthWlj2[?]uushshAche2tthD[?]bhtt[?] | [?]O[?]w[?]q`hRayau1DoaujG'l3[?]Pw[?][?]oiayy2[?][?]gh3HayYm[?]H[ | ?]j9ayj2H5thshOkh[?]8qZ2[?]ouOspGHZT[?]9g[?]6Oj | j45 wrote: | This reminds me a bit of TetriNET. Also, I now miss TetriNET. | | Ooc is there a resource that catalogues the different interesting | variants of Tetris? | mLuby wrote: | IDK why the link is to the Github. Here's the [actual | site](https://qntm.org/hatetris) and here's the [browser | demo](https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html). | [deleted] | dang wrote: | Changed from https://github.com/qntm/hatetris. Thanks! | WarOnPrivacy wrote: | That something I wonder frequently when I find myself at | Github. | littledot5566 wrote: | Umm... all it did was give "S" pieces... I hate it, so mission | accomplished... | | replay of last game: hj[?]2chph[?][?]tti23oI[?]ochImmLIl[?]ttM[?] | tqkh@ttayj2[?]ouu[?]nyI[?][?]bay[?]bhaylai3 | Trufa wrote: | I got it to 5, how far are you all getting? | zxexz wrote: | I got to 4. How did you get to 5? | Trufa wrote: | Something like this: Gauay[?]tttainggRIh2dhlth[?]tsu[?]lJh1ch | [?]lHokhhKhay[?]29s[?]bhchS[?]T'hiipsptaa@1Rhuu2SI[?][?]ssDlt | ttr[?]Ol[?]Sq~k2rrchff[?]Uuu0KsS[?][?]qctt67[?]52ny[?]iiddht@ | 5Ksm[?][?]Rh | and0rskr wrote: | I got 6. Surprisingly, that seems like that's pretty good | based on the comments. Basically stacked across the vertical | (starting right and worked my way left). | bennysomething wrote: | Does anyone know if Gameboy Tetris had any code in it to attempt | to give you bad pieces? | NauticalStu wrote: | It doesn't, although its randomizer does favor some pieces over | others: | | https://harddrop.com/wiki/Tetris_(Game_Boy)#Randomizer | malkia wrote: | Gosh, I'm terrible - could not even get one line - "dhshN[?]0ay[? | ]iittr[?]lddthG[?]chttd[?]ch[?]a[?]uutth[?]tt[?]ai2nou[?]YqT2SHzy | ghradhau[?][?]rtt[?]rttOEai[?]ttouF27g[?]DDjgnnuuUd[?]elejshNngau | " | malkia wrote: | Ok, could this be used for proof of work - where the challenge is | going to be - get N lines... lol Hatetriscoin | polyamid23 wrote: | It literaly gives me the same piece everytime. Don't know if it | is broken or this piece is concidered to be the worst... | xtracto wrote: | Haha, it gives you an S (Z), except when you are about to fill | up a line. (place SSSSS together, filling the bottom space). | Then it gives you a I. At some point it gave me an L and a J. | The darn thing is really mischievous! | geocrasher wrote: | You spelled Monotonous wrong ;) It basically gives you the | worst piece (Z) every time unless there's another worst | piece. I got a 4 bar line OOOO and also an L once. | | Overall I just wasn't impressed. It reminds me of the level | of tetris you'd reach after beating all the easier levels | only to find that you got to the level that the game creators | decided nobody could ever win because they didn't write an | ending sequence. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | I mean, it does exactly what it set out to do. It wasn't | meant to be fun. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | If you think it's broken, then you should try to clear some | lines, I dare you! >:D | teachingassist wrote: | It will keep giving you that piece until you threaten to get a | line using only that piece. | einpoklum wrote: | I dunno... usual Tetris feels like that already :-( | kevincox wrote: | quadrapassel (open source GNOME Tetris) also has this option | called "Choose difficult pieces". | mitko wrote: | Is there a minimal guaranteed optimal play for the game of tetris | (not just hatetris as linked here). Or phrased another way, if | you play against the smartest, most devious AI, what's a score | that you cannot get past. | | The high score of hatetris seems to be 31 lines, but it seems | that it may be taking advantage of the algorithm being myopically | giving you the worst piece 1 step ahead, and being deterministic. | I wonder if the algorithm has some randomness (among multiple | horrible pieces) and multi-step look ahead, how would that affect | the high score. | | Has anyone done research on tetris's worst case bounds? | lalaithion wrote: | The author of Hatetris did a quick look into this: | https://qntm.org/tetris | xgulfie wrote: | Tetris' worst case is all S-pieces or all Z-pieces, in which | case you could never clear a single line. | lalaithion wrote: | You can trivially clear lines with infinite S-pieces or | infinite Z-pieces. | MaxBarraclough wrote: | Direct playable link: | https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | Does it _just_ give the S shaped piece? I tried playing and | that 's all I got. | dmoy wrote: | from their description | | > Yes, you will get a lot of S pieces. But it doesn't give | you solely S pieces - if that were the case, then it would be | possible to make lines forever, which is much too easy. | young_unixer wrote: | tip: don't try to make all your lines perfect. You'll have to | sacrifice some lines if you ever want to complete one. | jupp0r wrote: | I was looking for that in the readme, thanks! | emehrkay wrote: | For about 15 years I've been trying to figure out how to | articulate a `Tetris is life` essay. "Things are going good, | you're given an S piece that doesnt fit anywhere. You have to | decide where you'll put that blocking piece so that you can | hopefully clear it later. This might be an unexpected car repair | bill or a death that you aren't emotionally capable of addressing | ... You're in control, you have a good job, a great partner, and | yall are saving to buy a house -- basically waiting for an l | piece to complete your `Tetris`..." | | Anyway, this game of (ha)Tetris is a lot like a lot of people's | lives, just roadblock after roadblock. While the normal version | where you start from zero on level one is probably an upper | middle class life. And Id say that the majority of people in the | world start on level 6 with the board halfway filled with a bunch | of gaps and the pieces move at a speed that is barely | controllable (im thinking of the classic gameboy version when I | imagine these boards) | | Hatetris is cool. I couldn't get one line and I consider myself a | damn good tetris player. It kept giving me S pieces and threw a Z | in there and then an l | edent wrote: | There is an essay like that - https://medium.com/the- | mission/your-life-is-tetris-stop-play... | | And here's my rebuttal to it - | https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/01/for-some-people-life-is-har... | alanbernstein wrote: | Perhaps the only thing that life is, is life, and tetris is a | slightly less-wrong metaphor than chess? | qsort wrote: | I'd suggest that life is neither Chess nor Tetris, it's Magic | the Gathering: | | - You have to learn to relentlessly blame yourself for the | mistakes you make, but also to accept that you can't change | everything, and sometimes you WILL lose to random luck, no | matter what you do. | | - Actually understanding probability goes a long way. | | - Regrettably, a large chunk of the game depends on your | initial hand. | I-M-S wrote: | Which is probably why my favourite card game is now | Dominion - everybody has the exact same starting position | and access to resources. Too bad it doesn't extrapolate to | the life analogy. | dec0dedab0de wrote: | ... and sometimes your opponent can just afford a better | deck than you. | YeGoblynQueenne wrote: | - Wizzards of the coast will take all your lunch money. | | No, wait. | | But actually true. | psychometry wrote: | >In life, your only opponent is yourself. | | This argument reminds me of people who try to deny things | like white privilege by describing how hard they had to work | to get where they are now. Yeah, well, for a lot of people | working hard (or not) isn't the only important factor that's | determining their odds of success. _That 's_ the privilege... | ImprobableTruth wrote: | I hate the framing of 'privilege', because it portrays | these things as some special. unfair advantage, rather than | other groups having a unfair disadvantage. You could say | that poor people are 'housing privileged' as homeless | people have it even worse, but I think it's absolutely | clear what an awful thing that would be to say. | | Being rich, famous or well-connected, that is 'real' | privilege and should rightfully be called out. Not having | to fear encounters with the police, not being discriminated | in regards to employment or not being harassed on the | streets are fundamental rights. Even if you don't care | about being sensitive, telling people that they are | privileged for having these is just so obviously | counterproductive. | Ma8ee wrote: | In a global perspective, it's defined privilege if you | are a white male in Europe or North America. You already | have more opportunities than 99% of the world population. | | But I wouldn't use the words unfair advantage. Most of us | didn't cheat or do anything immoral to be born in this | position, and trying to make our lives worse won't help | anyone else. The point isn't to try to make us feel bad | (not how I interpret it at least), but that we try to | remember that we are very lucky people being born into | this position, and that the overwhelming majority were | less lucky than we are. | BiteCode_dev wrote: | Ah those humans with their sunny day privileges. Don't | you think about all those who live in the UK? | marcosdumay wrote: | It is a really bad framing except when used on the | original context, that is interacting with the kind of | people that blame poverty on the poor life choices. | | People using it to refer people that aren't acting like | assholes should indeed drop that wording. It does nothing | but antagonize people. | psychometry wrote: | It sure sounds like you're the one being overly sensitive | given that you're describing two equivalent states of | affair and finding one of them offensive because you | don't the words attached to it. | selestify wrote: | Well of course, there's a difference in connotation of | blame between "privileged" and "disadvantaged", even if | they both refer to the same relative difference. It's as | if the terminology of "privileged" is purposefully trying | to offend. | bongothrowaway wrote: | It is. The -point- of the term is to reverse the usual | dynamic between the privileged and the disadvantaged. | What that dynamic is depends on whether you see the | categories in this comparison as only two (the haves and | the have-nots) or three (including a "normal" category | which lies somewhere between the two), or perhaps as a | spectrum (where privileged and disadvantaged arguably lie | at the extremes of the bell curve). | namdnay wrote: | I think the term "privilege" was coined on purpose to | flip the viewpoint and make us think about life in | others' shoes. "What you consider normal life is | something they can only dream of" | | I don't think it's meant to be a serious description of | the situation | grawprog wrote: | >That's the privilege... | | Only experienced by white people of course which also by | your implication are incapable of experiencing | | >Yeah, well, for a lot of people working hard (or not) | isn't the only important factor that's determining their | odds of success | | It's great you lead a privileged enough life you've never | had to interact with poor struggling white people before. | psychometry wrote: | Thanks for proving my point. I assume at this point that | people who still don't understand the concept of | privilege are being deliberately obtuse, so I'm not going | to bother with you. The information is out there. You can | choose to make an effort to understand or not. | charrondev wrote: | I think the point is that whole collectively one group | may be more privileged, people are individuals and not a | collective. | | For example a black child born into extreme or moderate | wealth is undoubtedly more privileged than a white child | that is orphaned at a young age. | capitol_ wrote: | There is always statistical outliers in any large data | set, but they don't affect the median value | significantly. | bart_spoon wrote: | This is in no way a rebuttal to what they said. The point | is that privilege very well may exist and be a valid | concept surrounding an aggregate, but be a invalid tool | for comparing individuals. | psychometry wrote: | Who's using it to compare individuals? The entire | discussion revolves around populations and institutions. | [deleted] | psychometry wrote: | Conditionality is applied in the concept: Privilege is | essentially the difference in outcomes ascribed to two | otherwise identical people due to a particular | disadvantage that members of one group suffer but members | of the other group don't. | bart_spoon wrote: | This is also known as an ecological fallacy [0]. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy | SamBam wrote: | I got three lines. | | I realized half-way through that I had to get into a totally- | different mindset than normal Tetris. | | Normally, if the game gives you the wrong piece, you can put it | where it will do the least damage for your current plans, and | wait patiently for a better piece. | | What you have to realize in this one is that the game will | _never_ give you the piece you want, if it has any option of | giving you a worse one. | | And so you have to play this like a Chess puzzle: how can I | checkmate the game so that any piece it gives me will finish a | line? How can I force it to _either_ give me a piece that can | fit in a 1x1 hole in the middle, _or_ just give me 2x2 squares | and I can complete the row with those. | | It's quite different and fun when you think like that. | mitko wrote: | Thanks, that was a very helpful comment. I had to reason | backwards from "in what situation I'm guaranteed a line", and | then, how do I get there. I was able to get 4 lines with a | few tries. Here's my base2048 encoded game | | jh[?]T'ull2tth[?]Gqth1jD[?][?]k`ii[?][?]tt8iittOayhztt[?]a0Ks | aya25Iy[?]cWdj[?]sliim[?]bnyzjTii[?]kI[?]s'tthI[?]eeqKkhe[?]a | [?]kDj[?]0tnl[?]s5OaillUmshch[?]uu[?]ngngddhVmssthchNGrIhtts | altvali wrote: | You had the right idea, but you can tweak it to get 6: nyja | y[?]khghay[?]ddhsngF2uI[?]tttgh[?]bhtthkdjKhaOpouKspuDzgh[? | ]k`dh[?]oI[?][?]ttai[?]mG'8rs'ttth[?]gqr[?]fnUgh2tt[?][?]Et | taiOEl[?]sddhga[?]U[?][?]p[?]aug[?]phz | Syzygies wrote: | I'd wondered about this. Baseball pitchers don't throw the | worst pitch every time; you'd be expecting it. There has to | be game theory here, too. Thanks for articulating it. | runawaybottle wrote: | Or that, at scale, there really could be many people that | will actually land tails on ten consecutive coin tosses. | | And we often kinda say, 'hey that's life'. | [deleted] | kjrose wrote: | Same here. You can absolutely fill up the board in a way | where there's almost no problematic sections, and then | suddenly it's like. ok, well, no lines for you. | | I got like 5 lines I think. | 8note wrote: | I remember on the old RRRR one somebody got 99, but most | people couldn't get one line | teachingassist wrote: | I also noticed the same thing - when I was making progress | and got a particularly bad piece, the Tetris part of my brain | thinks "I'll just put this out of the way for now". | | Hatetris then gives me the same piece again. I think again: | "I'll just put this out of the way for now" | | I found it impossible to overcome this habit before running | out of space. | curiousllama wrote: | > I found it impossible to overcome this habit before | running out of space. | | There's some "tetris is life" wisdom in there. | akvadrako wrote: | I have a quote for you: | | _If Tetris has taught me anything it 's that errors pile up | and accomplishments disappear._ | Lammy wrote: | > It kept giving me S pieces and threw a Z in there and then an | l | | "Line piece. Line piece. _Line piece_. _LINE PIECE_! " | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alw5hs0chj0 | hansoolo wrote: | I have to verify my age for that... Duh! | dkersten wrote: | Same. I refuse to give google my credit card details or ID | for this. I've been on Youtube for about 13 years with this | account, I'd have to have been 5 or less to not be old | enough to view whatever I want now... What garbage. | Baeocystin wrote: | Still one of my favorite videos ten years on. Always fun to | see a fresh posting of it in the wild. :D | OGWhales wrote: | I got so many S pieces in a row that I was beginning to think | it was just a joke and that was the only possible piece | kensai wrote: | And the very moment I was about to go aha and score a line, a | reverse S came! >_< | boringg wrote: | Same thing until it pulled the old switcheroo - real | annoying! | | Second time I got a 4 line game in. I appreciate the total | change in thinking required to do well in the game. | david422 wrote: | Got 3 lines. | | Moral of the story - S pieces are the worst possible pieces. | systemvoltage wrote: | Your analogy suggests that life is 100% luck. Not everything in | life is handed to you through luck like Tetris pieces falling | from the sky. Your medical degree is largely dependent on you | studying, working hard and finally clearing the requirements. | Definitely a few shitty pieces to deal with though. It keeps | things interesting. Most people revel in building their own | blocks and not relying on stuff that falls from the sky. | rscho wrote: | Your medical degree is largely dependent on your family's | wealth, whether you have family in the medical field and | also, working hard. | | Trust me, I'm a doctor. | systemvoltage wrote: | Absolutely not true. I've know at least a dozen people that | have gotten medical degrees, albeit on student loans. | Working hard is the baseline, having a wealthy family helps | with the financing aspects but not necessary. You could | have tons of wealth, but still unable to attain medical | degree if you don't work hard. | | It's just an analogy. The main point is that most pieces | are built by people, they don't just fall off the sky. | rscho wrote: | We somewhat agree. But working hard is much easier when | you have strong support. And many pieces do fall off from | the sky for a lot of people. | js8 wrote: | > Anyway, this game of (ha)Tetris is a lot like a lot of | people's lives, just roadblock after roadblock. | | They should make a multiplayer version where you could pass the | pieces you don't like to other players! | hprotagonist wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_99 | codetrotter wrote: | Relevant parts of the Wikipedia article linked to by | parent: | | > Tetris 99 is a multiplayer puzzle game in which 99 | players play against each other at the same time, with the | aim to be the last player remaining. [...] As with normal | Tetris rules, players have the option to store a tetromino | piece to swap out at any time. By clearing multiple lines | or performing continuous line clears in a row, players can | send "garbage" to other players, which will appear on their | board unless they can quickly clear lines in response. More | garbage can be sent by completing combination moves in | succession of making a "tetris" (matching 4 lines at once) | or performing a "T-spin" (squeezing the T-shaped tetromino | into a position it would otherwise not fall into by rapidly | rotating it). | l0c0b0x wrote: | For about the same amount of years, I have thought of my life | as playing multiple Tetris games at the same time. Some games | moving at different speeds, depending on what's happening at | the time on each. I'd focus my priority on the fastest moving | games, without discarding the other (slower) games, since | accumulation is non-stop. | | ...and yes, in my spare time (at times), I play multiple tetris | games, but since I haven't found one that runs multiple games, | I have to run many different windows--so I don't do it very | often. | | Anybody know of a Tetris game that allows you to add multiple | games at the same time? That'd be awesome! | asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: | Here's a replay with four: RRHdghlTY[?]1GHeijh3ttiu6FayKh'Onywa | ooGHe4ShngP[?]hJnyatRIsh2[?]In28aaeEiD[?]ddq[?]iijeaaRR1pbdh[?] | OK'nyjD[?][?]mY@oody~0Or[?][?][?]aLth[?]phetiGoussnn[?]MO57 | | You have to try to sacrifice some lines in order to get | guaranteed lines. | kde8k4m wrote: | I managed 7: [?]ttay1ayshOghT[?]sGG[?]Otts[?]'[?]eibhgDKh'@GH | ayq2khii[?]EGHch[?][?]ttngng2iS[?]ldhaye2DayeN3Ks9kFPJii1Hou[ | ?]ylaiiedh[?]wg+10+Dm0Otth[?][?][?]D8ddh | imdoor wrote: | I managed to get 5: 6cI[?][?]ttny2rI[?]sh[?]eehv[?]0`[?]dd[?] | 1kZfEtthm[?]Gqh[?]nyjT58r[?]tt5[?]qh[?]oopiiKE[?]Y[?]OpI[?]5t | thITthgZH[?]ee[?]em[?]qairrWsay1O[?]0[?]tsh[?]G[?]e6DDy[?]lTs | t | dolmen wrote: | The world record from 2017 is 31. "2khd[?][?]IWFsaya29w[?]llj | iiy[?][?]dz[?][?]ngw[?]dyoam@ay[?]1RIT2[?]ayZ2ghI`SIZ[?]ttYkh | dhjN[?][?]eG[?][?]pee3[?]oCh`ttua2sou[?]lqfaeeew[?]tsqss[?]gG | Hph[?]dhCh'meaitt.53[?]aphmthsth[?][?][?]ayYsqcgJai[?]tsqss[? | ]v[?]Faoo[?][?]b[?]u~cjh0[?]jhI[?]mpdiiD[?]bh[?]skhDj[?][?]mK | hGBKhVh[?]cDzsh[?]l[?]Knn8KdhNqKhkh@d[?]wp1[?][?]ttp`r[?]vK[? | ]g[?]Zh'E[?]xGghsy`[?][?]Titthl[?]?" | asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: | Astonishing! I love it. | kreeben wrote: | That was a fun watch. You're really good at this! | | Absolutely love the playback feature. | kbenson wrote: | Here's one with 6: RGHaymLLnyVTldyay[?]thqIsh2ghQc5KhayuOngMH | V2llm[?]0O~53YRphJm[?]ny[?]1uw[?]'21[?]iinySbkh'cH[?]eettkhkh | ch'aekhjlaaZH1oaaai1cI[?]2[?]ayt[?]tthdcSh[?]l[?]E[?]R[?]r[?] | [?]s[?]oiTe[?]Nt`fau | | I suspect that there's some pathological behavior in the game | you can exploit to possibly get a line or more while giving | up a line (not that I searched and identified one, I think I | just got lucky on my second game because I don't play tetris | much so didn't have much of a strategy to unlearn). It would | be interesting if there a few of these behaviors that lead | into each other, which could lead to a stable state of | infinite lines. | | Not being random means there might be more to exploit. | salmonellaeater wrote: | Yeah you can game it to fill in upper levels because it | seems to greedily avoid letting you complete the next 1 | row. | | Here's a game with 7: | | [?]qnytql2spaygShchtttm[?]ttia[?]Oayo9w[?]2[?]I[?]I[?]D[?][ | ?]gIsnyiou[?]5ngU[?][?][?]P[?][?]sr[?][?]s[?]TchfD[?]ttJelj | jD[?]rttl4[?][?]Dj@ldhfdQLLbhghgh[?]iilNmauI[?]z[?]H[?]bhD | barkingcat wrote: | this one is pretty brilliant | b3orn wrote: | 8: [?]ttrll2gCh'djnyddhITchqe2ddhVdzbGHtsdhoongii1vph[?]y | umettT[?]ZH[?]ghJii3SwT1tt2[?]ddhaaekhtdhm[?]ShrmT[?][?]V | j13a[?]25r2rGT[?]1RIOEOgI[?][?][?]H[?][?][?]~[?]1P`~b3?Wd | jG`X[?][?]DaJ[?][?]th[?]I4SjhvnThddh0Rh | kbenson wrote: | A little searching and I found this: | https://tetris.fandom.com/wiki/Hatetris#High_score which | includes a replay for a high score of 31, which I've | added below. | | 31: 2khd[?][?]IWFsaya29w[?]lljiiy[?][?]dz[?][?]ngw[?]dyoa | m@ay[?]1RIT2[?]ayZ2ghI`SIZ[?]ttYkhdhjN[?][?]eG[?][?]pee3[ | ?]oCh`ttua2sou[?]lqfaeeew[?]tsqss[?]gGHph[?]dhCh'meaitt.5 | 3[?]aphmthsth[?][?][?]ayYsqcgJai[?]tsqss[?]v[?]Faoo[?][?] | b[?]u~cjh0[?]jhI[?]mpdiiD[?]bh[?]skhDj[?][?]mKhGBKhVh[?]c | Dzsh[?]l[?]Knn8KdhNqKhkh@d[?]wp1[?][?]ttp`r[?]vK[?]g[?]Zh | 'E[?]xGghsy`[?][?]Titthl[?]? | altvali wrote: | small improvement to your solution, 9: sqoe2gD[?]OttZh[?] | ymnya1payaoos~e1iit[?]ttZ51ddayw2kITs2ghI[?]2llii[?]2[?]r | [?]jhh@1pllllai[?]u[?]3Z[?]`5[?]D[?][?]aaeeDItDsdj[?]Fuu[ | ?]oi[?]zp0nngem0bCh'@5ddhsDoy3 | bmsleight_ wrote: | Another 6: ddh5ayuthngkh[?]nged5[?]lT2[?]IJ8ttS[?][?]q0e2[? | ]ss[?][?]ttt[?][?]th7ngFLLs[?]Zaao[?]s[?]ttj[?][?][?]iim1[? | ]IhE[?]ai[?]sI[?]O[?]p[?]D[?]~RmG'PnmJn[?][?]dhkhT[?]eeae | | Agree it is like chess. | danbolt wrote: | Are you familiar with Twinbeard's _Futiltris_? You 'll need | Flash to play it these days, but I always found it really | entertaining. | | [0] http://twinbeard.com/140_futilitris [1] | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab62aohgpKI | JohnHammersley wrote: | Best I could do is five lines, and even that felt like it was | because the game was optimized to prevent "any line now" rather | than "any lines in future". | | Method: If you lay the "s" pieces on their tip, next to each | other horizontally, starting from one side, when you get to | having a gap of two left on the other side, it changes to | giving you line pieces. You can then lay these line pieces | horizontally on top of the s pieces to create a full "wall" | eight blocks wide all the way to the top. Then start filling in | the two-wide column to start making lines. Best this seems to | give is five. | | Has anyone made it to six? Is it possible? | | Edit: after reading more of the comments here, I see the high | score is 31!!! Wow, didn't expect that -- it is neat to watch | it through: | | 2khd[?][?]IWFsaya29w[?]lljiiy[?][?]dz[?][?]ngw[?]dyoam@ay[?]1RI | T2[?]ayZ2ghI`SIZ[?]ttYkhdhjN[?][?]eG[?][?]pee3[?]oCh`ttua2sou[? | ]lqfaeeew[?]tsqss[?]gGHph[?]dhCh'meaitt.53[?]aphmthsth[?][?][?] | ayYsqcgJai[?]tsqss[?]v[?]Faoo[?][?]b[?]u~cjh0[?]jhI[?]mpdiiD[?] | bh[?]skhDj[?][?]mKhGBKhVh[?]cDzsh[?]l[?]Knn8KdhNqKhkh@d[?]wp1[? | ][?]ttp`r[?]vK[?]g[?]Zh'E[?]xGghsy`[?][?]Titthl[?]? | jkingsbery wrote: | Got to 6! | | hiaydzhIttchng1pbh[?]bdds[?]hZe2nytajuayectaaee6[?]h7tt[?][?] | oosa[?]oikhiaddqei[?]2[?]'[?]ll[?]a2ngN[?]hiZh[?]1cha[?][?]tt | P[?][?]5tth[?][?]aai[?]llCh'zlkhkh[?]vdds[?]SVp@oS[?]au | jkingsbery wrote: | And here's 7 | | khaaay[?]ddhj[?]ee5srgq84StthzeShchttlS2[?]ii[?]Shchckc3khf | tta2aye2ei[?]2[?]ayq1GHngZH[?]ka[?]t[?]ei1khnyiiddhcl`2Ghth | [?]eeqpa[?]ghyksp[?]F[?][?]0Hw[?]tZrp[?][?] | JohnHammersley wrote: | That's awesome (and props to the creator for including | such a convenient replay system) :) | junga wrote: | Wow, like every time I grab the old gameboy and play some | rounds of tetris I just think the very same thing: tetris is a | wonderful anology for life. And of course I did not expect | someone else to think the same. Thank you! :) | neffy wrote: | Well here is the soundtrack... | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8 | | Compete History of the Soviet Union, arranged to the music of | Tetris. Pigwiththefaceofaboy. | YeGoblynQueenne wrote: | I just came here to ask how does it know it's giving you the | worst possible piece. And I find this. | | :shakes head: | bitshiftfaced wrote: | I believe that it may analyze the board for all possible | piece placements for all pieces and then choose the piece | that provides the least good solution. | YeGoblynQueenne wrote: | Thanks. It's actually explained in the link on the github | page after all. I just missed it the first time. It's what | you say basically: | | _The method by which the AI selects the worst possible | piece is extremely simple to describe (test all possible | locations of all possible pieces, see which of the pieces ' | best-case scenarios is the worst, then spawn that worst | piece), but quite time-consuming to execute, so please | forgive me if your browser chugs a little after locking | each piece. If you can figure out a way to accelerate the | algorithm without diminishing its hate-filled efficiency, | do let me know. The algorithm for "weighing" possibilities | is to simply maximise the highest point of the "tower" | after the piece is landed._ | | The author says that the algorithm couldn't be changed | without invalidating the replays so I'm guessing that means | it's a deterministic algorithm. Judging from the comment | about "weighing" possibilities (which I interpret as | evaluating boards) I'm further guessing it's an ad-hoc | implementation of Best-First Search. In that case, I | suspect its performance could be improved quite a bit by | replacing it with a Monte Carlo search. But as the author | fears, that would definitely invalidate replays (you'd get | slightly different results each time). | | Another optimisation is some kind of prunning heuristic- | some kind of intuition about which pieces P don't need to | be considered once a certain piece S has been rejected as | the worst possible, because those other pieces P can only | yield better boards then S (better for the player). No idea | what that heuristic would look like, but the result would | stay the same so the replays could still run as before. | mumphster wrote: | the link goes straight to the source code... why not just | look at it instead of guessing | bitshiftfaced wrote: | An interesting challenge might be to make an "offline" | version. How difficult a randomizer can you make without | being able to see the player's board? | | You'd lay down some rules such as "the pieces must | theoretically have an even distribution over some period" | and "piece sequences must come probabilistically and not | hard coded." | | You could then objectively test the randomizer by pitting | a standardized bot against it. | jdonaldson wrote: | This is a great analogy, I might have to steal it. | nautilus12 wrote: | Lol, it just gives me S pieces constantly. | SamBam wrote: | Right, that's the first puzzle of the game. | | If you can't figure out how to score a row from only S's (it's | not intuitive, because it's not what you'd do in normal Tetris | if you got several S's), then it will keep giving you those. | | Once you work out how to make a line with S's, it will give you | something else before you complete it. | Asraelite wrote: | It would be nice if it actually implemented SRS. I tried to do an | S-twist and was disappointed that I couldn't. | dang wrote: | Ok you guys, all the base-64 Tetris lines in here are breaking | the layout of this page. Not because of base-64 or Tetris; it's | the long unbroken lines. Usually I succumb to psychological | pressure and edit them (by adding whitespace and--yes--telling | the commenter we did so), but there are so many here that you've | broken me. | | If anyone figures out how to fix HN's CSS so that it doesn't do | this anymore, without breaking anything else, we will find a good | way to glorify you. One helpful user seemed to come close, but | ended up having better things to do. Others have come close, but | with changes that broke something else. It may not be that hard, | but my body rejects learning enough CSS to find out. | | (Also, yes, HN's HTML and CSS and general layout, and many other | visible things about the site, are old-fashioned and weird and | perhaps even trollish when you look at them a certain way and | Mercury is in Leo, and anything anyone might say about that was | probably already a cliche 10 years ago, so it would be good not | to go there if you'd be so kind. It is what it is.) | castaweh wrote: | Feels too simple to be right, but would this work? word-break: | break-word; on the .comment class? | | .comment { font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: | 9pt; word-break: break-word; } | qsort wrote: | Open-ended homework for those who are interested: solve the same | problem, but with actual Tetris rules. | | I've seen a bunch of those "adversarial tetris" variants, and | they all operate under the assumption that any of the seven | pieces can appear at any time, and with only one preview. | | Modern Tetris has 3 previews + hold, and pieces are drawn | randomly "from a bag", without replacement (more formally, if | P[i] is the sequence of pieces, each aligned subsequence of 7 | pieces must be a permutation of the tetrominos). | | This would be more interesting to make/play. Note that under such | rules there exists a strategy that allows infinite play if the | well is at least 17 tiles high. | Kaze404 wrote: | There's an aversarial Tetris you can play in any Tetris | implementation: no rotation. It's surprisingly hard. | jandrese wrote: | To be fair, the random piece selection is how the Tetris on the | NES and GB worked, which is how many Americans were introduced | to Tetris. Getting 5 Z or S pieces in a row was definitely | something that happens regularly in those versions. | | An interesting note about the versions that use the piece bag | strategy is that the game can be solved. It's possible to play | until the game speeds up to the point where you can no longer | get a piece to the edge of the screen before it hits the | bottom. https://tetris.wiki/Playing_forever | | Fun fact, Tetris is NP-Hard. | https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mathematicians-pr... | Wowfunhappy wrote: | I would at minimum like to play this with a Hold option. I'm | not a huge fan of the mechanic in normal Tetris, because IMO | dealing with and recovering from unfortunately-timed pieces is | a key part of the game. But, that's not really an issue here! | qsort wrote: | Hold changes the game enough that if you don't like it I | can't blame you, but it's not about recovering. It's about | storing T pieces to allow B2B TSD to be performed safely, | without the threat of 5-10 lines of garbage coming your way. | In general, I fall on the side of those who like it because | it opens the game to more variation in strategies. Removing | hold would also be a buff to strategies that aren't | particularly fun to play against like 4-wide. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | But that's for PvP games. IMO, the problem with modern | Tetris rules is that they're optimized for PvP modes at the | expense of marathon mode. | | In marathon mode, the only garbage blocks are the mess you | create for yourself. These arise naturally from situations | such as (1) receiving the wrong piece at the wrong time and | (2) failing to maneuver a piece correctly before it locks. | It is _good_ for these situations to arise naturally during | the course of the game. | | If I was in charge of Tetris, I would retain Hold, | EasySpin, and piece previews in PvP games where they make | sense, but I'd disable them in marathon mode. | etxm wrote: | Did you just nerd snipe all of HN? | qsort wrote: | Kind of a self-snipe, really :) | | I spent more time that's reasonable on Tetris, but mostly on | modern variants. The 'classic' tetris most people are used to | feels kind of weird to me. | username90 wrote: | The most popular Tetris was the original, it is one of the most | sold video games ever, and it didn't even allow you to hold a | piece. That is what people think of when they hear Tetris, it | isn't old enough that the people who played it back then are | dead. | chungy wrote: | It's actually doubtful most people have even seen the | original, let alone played it ;) | | Still, Nintendo's Tetris implementations on NES and Game Boy | are both early and among the best-known versions, neither of | which use a piece bag. | | NES Tetris is both a pretty good implementation to be | enjoyable, and it's unchanging in a way that makes it ideal | for competition. It is gaining new players to this day. | amatecha wrote: | For anyone wondering, the original implementation was on a | PDP-11 clone called Electronika 60 | https://tetris.wiki/Tetris_(Electronika_60) ... not the | 1989 Game Boy version most people consider to be the | "original" :) | spijdar wrote: | I've got the backplane and boards to build a more-or-less | LSI-11, the original system cloned by the Electronika 60. | One day I really want to load the original Tetris onto it | somehow... Would probably have to use a terminal emulator | to get the Cyrillic character set to render, but I bet | it's possible! | russellbeattie wrote: | My son bought me an original Game Boy with Tetris for Christmas | for its sentimental value. Turned out to be a real challenge. | | If you're used to the current versions, going back in time is | crazy hard! No hold pieces, a single preview, the pieces lock-in | as soon as they touch, and the randomness is truly random. I was | astounded by how hard these small changes make the game. I had | _totally_ forgotten! | chasing wrote: | So 98% S and Z pieces and no squares or long 4x1s. Seems about | right! | kakkun wrote: | Had no idea that the creator of Hatetris was also the author for | There Is No Antimemetics Division. http://scp- | wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub | alanbernstein wrote: | I can't tell if there is actually a story by that title and | it's not linked to for the obvious reason... or if that title | just refers to the other related stories. | cwmma wrote: | It's the name of the book collecting the stories | https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0915M7T61 | k__ wrote: | There is one story by that title and a book collecting all | the related stories. | | Otherwise, the story and related stories are spread across | the SCP database. | alanbernstein wrote: | I love that this comment and its sibling contradict each | other, confounding the question even more. It makes me | hesitant to ask you for a link to the story. | k__ wrote: | http://www.scpwiki.com/antimemetics-division-hub | AlphaWeaver wrote: | I KNEW I recognized the username from somewhere! | Detry322 wrote: | Speaking of silly Tetris games, I once made a version of Tetris | where you can only move pieces by shooting them - | https://jack.plus/guntris/ | | The pieces aren't on a grid either - makes playing it very | frustrating. | airstrike wrote: | WOW... that's frustrating! Thank you... | [deleted] | taklamunda wrote: | It looks like so much impressive. Good luck n continue.. | mikepurvis wrote: | Vaguely related, but I've found the tetris-y mobile game High | Rise to have a surprising amount of depth: | | https://smpl.productions/high-rise/ | | I don't think the creators of it quite anticipated how effective | the center-merge strategy could be at keeping the board clear, at | least based on their surprised Twitter reactions to users | (including myself) achieving scores into the low 7 figures. | | But given that the game has no timer or really anything that | explicitly escalates the difficulty over time, once you figure | out how to maintain steady state, you can theoretically play | indefinitely (though it does very occasionally crash). | | This has raised an interesting question for me about what it | would look like to have a version of High Rise with an | adversarial bot choosing your pieces. Perhaps the bot's | "meanness" of selection could escalate as you get into higher | scores, with some kind of checkpoint system to start the game at | certain milestones/hardnesses once you've proven you can | consistently achieve them through ordinary play. | knodi123 wrote: | Good grief, I'm angry and stressed even though I was just | interacting with a simple hostile algorithm. I felt _personally_ | attacked. This thing has fascinating psychological implications. | unholiness wrote: | I feel like there's some bug where it gives me S's when a Z would | clearly be worse. I managed 3 lines, all of which were completed | by S's and would have been thwarted by Z's. | | In fact I'm not sure I got a Z all game, though it seems other | commenters did. | SamBam wrote: | I got a Z once when an S would have scored me a row. | | Did you keep the replay code of your game? | [deleted] | taftster wrote: | I think what's interesting about this is the tendency for it to | give you the same piece over and over again. That is, until | you've tricked it enough that the same piece will clear a line, | then it will give you the next piece over and over. | | As it relates to real Tetris, it's usually the case that the same | piece given multiple times in a row does in fact cause the most | problems (at least for me). | | What is the algorithm in normal Tetris for delivering pieces? Is | it completely random, or is there a bit of "frustration" added to | the piece distribution? | [deleted] | jordan314 wrote: | Tangentially, I recently played the tetris theme on a stepper | motor. https://twitter.com/alana31415/status/1389886733769007108 | ericmathison wrote: | I got 8: [?]ttaoc2jnyDzkh1DR[?]shqkhiimOaya[?]mnyR2[?]w[?]bhttT[? | ]2paiii86ai0m[?]L[?]bhczksEqchddh1bhayeN2ddeiavttnniittY[?]ZgT[?] | osai[?]8s0b[?][?]8yDeN3[?]1/[?]aFkh[?]FKsvt[?]3 | jdauriemma wrote: | I can't stop myself from smiling while playing, this is | hilariously tricky | unholiness wrote: | All right I'll bite. Here's my replay with 4, can anyone do | better? | | Ittay[?]aiqaiU[?]ghay[?][?]au[?]kh2aytuuttnc2khV[?]RROaiL2jKddhmo | ia[?]2dylsOEOuZ2kwttthhdj15ng06gh[?]jdhou[?]aittm`iiddCdjHdh | unholiness wrote: | With some more fiddling I got 5: hqny[?]qkh[?]3Tays[?]Ruu[?]rtt | ngdjnysayl2[?]IJlZIt[?]gI[?]GqWdjvttn[?][?]mIe[?]khaiSr[?]ngvbh | [?][?]uu[?][?]l[?][?][?]I[?][?]Oaidh[?]ssajshN`okS[?]'ghw35Gddh | knbRR | fastball wrote: | Here's my 5 with a similar strat: thttzh[?]cttu[?][?]KsaydIny | j[?]csCh'm[?]thghI[?]aiaae[?]myD[?]mCh'ou[?]44B[?]Edqavsh[?]c | [?]sh[?]c[?][?]q[?][?]Ch'ouJvGk[?][?]szqsO~2[?]OZH[?]eGGdKhOZ | HTllauL[?]Gdj6d[?]g[?]uul42veaiOVKNG3 | | Could maybe combine the two to get 6. | layer8 wrote: | I managed to reach 11: sqei2[?]w[?]th3aicaip`Djaia[?]qngytq[?][ | ?]ljny1rIr2g[?]w2nyj[?]crrq[?][?]dj6ayT[?]nyjph[?][?]rrI[?]q2F2 | Sw1GHngF[?]8tTjussKShtny+10+ddhw[?][?][?]nytr[?]ioe[?]D7o[?][?] | R[?][?]Rkh[?]3pNGt[?]umSW[?]shT`sd[?]iingdho5 | | But the current highscore seems to be 31: | https://qntm.org/hatetris#sec0 | juancn wrote: | It's mostly the S shaped piece for me. | bmosse wrote: | does anyone know what happened to Evil Tetris, an old Mac game | that had awesome sound effects (nice slide!)? | bmosse wrote: | Nevermind, found it: | https://macintoshgarden.org/games/wesleyan-tetris | fighterpilot wrote: | Competitive Hatetris would be fun | anonu wrote: | https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html | alex7389 wrote: | In case you want to get your mood up afterwards, here's an easy | version of the 2048 game: https://sbeyer.github.io/2048/ | kwdc wrote: | I feel like there should be a middle ground alternative where its | normal tetris for awhile but then it just goes nasty. First it | lulls you into a false sense of security and proficiency then it | strikes hard. | maxqin1 wrote: | That's normal Tetris. As the speed increases, you're more | likely to get a difficult piece. | kwdc wrote: | I'm thinking more devious rather than just simply speeding | up. | hyperdimension wrote: | I remember playing a game with the same principle; it was called | `bastet'. | dcanelhas wrote: | http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man6/bastet.6.htm... | sswam wrote: | What has been will be again, what has been done will be done | again; ... there is nothing new under the sun. | anthony_romeo wrote: | It's in a number of linux package repos (it's at least in | Ubuntu and Debian). | | Though I remember at least getting a few lines in Bastet. | Hateris seemed to be a lot more difficult (as the article | states should be the case). | bayindirh wrote: | Bastet has a hard setting, which is really torturing the | naive souls playing it. | hprotagonist wrote: | somewhere in north africa, a cat is _really_ pissed off and | doesn 't know why. | jetrink wrote: | Speaking of Tetris and Hatetris, have you ever heard of Hatris? I | just learned about it from last week's No Such Thing as a Fish | podcast. Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, continued to | experiment with the Tetris formula. One of the games he made was | called Hatris[2] which involves hats falling on people's heads. | Entertainment Weekly reviewed it saying: "There is, after all, a | cure for Tetris addiction. It's Hatris.[3]" | | 1. https://www.nosuchthingasafish.com/ | | 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioHEQlTxiLY | | 3. https://ew.com/article/1991/05/24/new-videogames/ | rozab wrote: | Hatris has nothing on the fourth installment, which is called | 'Faces... tris III'. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faces_(video_game) | [deleted] | techrat wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joH9qU-vDeY | | My god, it looks so infuriating... and not in the 'puzzle is | hard' kind of way, but legitimately awful gameplay. | Kaze404 wrote: | Little unknown fact. The rights to Hatris were then sold to | Valve, which spawned the critically acclaimed game Team | Fortress 2 :) | chacha2 wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUJb1BD63ME | | Quick rundown of tetris history. | bspammer wrote: | I love this video from the always fantastic matthewmatosis, | where he argues that Tetris is the most perfect game ever | created. | | https://youtu.be/Tnztj1UlkQs | huachimingo wrote: | Or Bop-It Tetris, where you had to rotate and push the pieces. | andrewflnr wrote: | "Show HN" is generally for things you made yourself, and I'm | fairly confident you are not Sam. | lxgr wrote: | Indeed not Sam: | https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1390322961995939842 | _0ffh wrote: | > "every coder has to build Tetris at least once in their life" | | I suspect this is true. Also a Lisp interpreter, but Forth only | for some. | jtbayly wrote: | Doesn't this mean that you'd never get a long or square piece? | anotha1 wrote: | It depends on the algo. So not if it's optimizing for least | placements to insert that would clear a row. | innocenat wrote: | No. For example, there are no flat part on your playing field, | then you would get square. | SamBam wrote: | I got several square pieces, because I was able to get to a | state where any other piece would fit into the remaining 1x1 | hole, and so a square piece was the only thing that would block | me. | goda90 wrote: | I layered S pieces horizontally across the bottom and then it | gave me a long piece. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | Only if you can't use it to finish a line at that time, lol. | tickthokk wrote: | Someone got 31 lines on Youtube. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuwI52xwyuU | | Replay: 2khd[?][?]IWFsaya29w[?]lljiiy[?][?]dz[?][?]ngw[?]dyoam@ay | [?]1RIT2[?]ayZ2ghI`SIZ[?]ttYkhdhjN[?][?]eG[?][?]pee3[?]oCh`ttua2s | ou[?]lqfaeeew[?]tsqss[?]gGHph[?]dhCh'meaitt.53[?]aphmthsth[?][?][ | ?]ayYsqcgJai[?]tsqss[?]v[?]Faoo[?][?]b[?]u~cjh0[?]jhI[?]mpdiiD[?] | bh[?]skhDj[?][?]mKhGBKhVh[?]cDzsh[?]l[?]Knn8KdhNqKhkh@d[?]wp1[?][ | ?]ttp`r[?]vK[?]g[?]Zh'E[?]xGghsy`[?][?]Titthl[?]? | Wowfunhappy wrote: | HN cut this off so I couldn't copy and paste it without opening | developer tools. I can't find a way to put the code in a HN | comment without breaking it, but you can go here and copy and | paste: | | https://itty.bitty.site/#Incredible_Hatetris_Replay/?XQAAAAJ... | | Also, it's amazing, definitely give it a watch! | linux2647 wrote: | Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/724/ | azhenley wrote: | The writeup, which I find more interesting, is found here: | | https://qntm.org/hatetris | LanceH wrote: | "Tetris 2020" | swyx wrote: | this is remarkable. In my first playthrough I was not able to | clear a _single line_. | AlanSE wrote: | I read the topic and thought "oh, this sounds like fun, I want | to play" | | Then I played it. Kudos to the creator. I really do hate it. | JohnTHaller wrote: | I wonder if any inspiration came from "The Tetris God" by | CollegeHumor 10 years ago: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alw5hs0chj0 | | "line piece, Line Piece, LIINE PIEECE!" | quacked wrote: | I've always thought that sketch was the funniest one on CH. | furyofantares wrote: | I can't beat 5 lines. Another goal: Find a state where it gives | me a T piece. I've gotten all the other pieces | | replay of last game: fqaae2gD[?]GqkhGTLpEttCh'ctt[?]ayKE[?]WkhEDj | @jqayamq7.5[?]1GHbh@jtt0[?][?]k[?][?][?]qv[?][?]DKdhkchShchgT6Shc | h[?]ddz[?][?]Ch'nythO[?]sSH5[?]by[?]KsaieGshLiu[?]GCh'gd92hEPCh[? | ]D | bennysomething wrote: | I don't understand how it can possibly select the "worst piece". | As far as I've always believed, Tetris is np complete. Now I | understand that in very simple terms you could say for one move | that a piece looks difficult, but in the long run it could turn | to have been a a great piece. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-06 23:00 UTC)